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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Mind
Educational
Men
Whose
Life
Philosophy
World
Literature
Adapting
Whatever
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Given
Practicals
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May
Aids
More quotes by William James
Man lives for science as well as bread.
William James
If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
William James
Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
William James
Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
William James
I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
William James
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
William James
Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James
All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
William James
The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.
William James
But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.
William James
It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
William James
Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
William James
Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
William James
